


Portions For Foxes

by pukeandcry



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:19:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1928106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pukeandcry/pseuds/pukeandcry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You know how Tommo is about dares,” Harry says, laughing once, without any humor.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“An idiot,” Nick supplies, feeling a bit dazed. “But he’s always like that, so.”</i></p><p> </p><p>Or, Louis injures himself, and somehow Nick winds up taking care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portions For Foxes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annemari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annemari/gifts).



> For the lovely [annemari](http://archiveofourown.org/users/annemari), who gave me so many amazing prompts I barely knew where to start. I can never resist a little hurt/comfort with a side of cuddling and worrying, though, and I hope this lives up to your wonderful prompt <3
> 
> Includes mentions of moderately serious but not life-threatening injuries (a broken leg and wrist and a concussion), although only after they've occurred, and brief mentions of hospitalization.

_don’t freak out_ , the text from Harry says when it comes in at just gone midnight on a Friday, _but somethings happened_.

Of course, then, the first thing Nick does is start to freak out. Just a bit, since he doesn’t know what he’s meant to be not panicking about yet, but he knows how Harry’s roundabout ways work, and if there’s something afoot he feels the need to warn Nick about in advance, even only vaguely, then it’s probably nothing very good.

 _not a good opener, popstar_ , he texts back, frowning suspiciously. Honestly, has that tactic ever worked on anyone, telling them not to worry straight out of the gate? Nick suspects all it does is cause premature nerves and forehead wrinkles. _explain_ , he adds.

Without meaning to, he starts mentally compiling a list of things it could be that he’s not meant to be freaking out over while he waits for Harry to respond. Harry’s crashed his idiotic motorbike and lost both his legs at the knees, perhaps. Although maybe not -- he likely wouldn’t be texting Nick if that were the case. Maybe Harry’s, like, running off to Vegas to elope, although Nick can’t guess who it might be with. Which doesn’t necessarily rule it out, actually, as Harry’s bizarrely tight when it comes to discussing who he’s shagging. Maybe Gemma’s pregnant. Maybe the band is splitting up and Harry’s going to pursue some horrible acoustic beardy-bloke solo career.

Maybe Nick needs a glass of wine, whatever it is.

He shuts off the television decisively. There’s only a nearly-empty bottle of vodka in his kitchen, though, no wine, so he chucks that into a tumbler with a Diet Coke and the only ice cube he can find in the freezer. It doesn’t have the sophistication of a glass of red wine, but it’ll probably do in a pinch.

His phone buzzes again on the countertop near his very adult drink.

 _can u talk now?_ Harry asks. _its kind of important dont want 2 txt._

Nick frowns at his phone. His working theories abandon him, then, in favor of a general sense of peril. Harry _hates_ to speak on the phone.

He steadies himself, and then dials Harry. Best to rip it off like a plaster, he thinks. All at once.

Harry still takes several long moments to answer, the bastard. In that time, Nick manages to gnaw his thumb nail down to the quick.

“Hi,” Harry says when he finally picks up. He sounds tired, voice all creaky like it gets when he’s jetlagged, or when he wants to avoid something unpleasant.

“Hi, love. Are you all right?” Nick asks.

“I’m fine,” Harry says, even though his voice says otherwise. “Or, I mean, not really. I’m okay, it’s not me, but.” He trails off into silence.

“What’s happened?” Nick asks. He can’t help the way it comes out a bit hysterical. 

Harry takes a shaky breath. “Okay. But, like. I just don’t want you to freak out like you do, sometimes, okay? So just, like. Everything’s fine. Or, it’ll be fine, so you don’t have to, y’know. Freak out.”

Nick pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Harry,” he says.

“Louis’ in hospital,” Harry tells him, and, oh.

That’s not what Nick had expected at all.

-

It takes ten minutes of halting, borderline infuriating conversation with Harry to get him to reveal that Louis, the absolute idiot, had decided to ride his _stupid_ fucking skateboard over the edge of some giant cement ledge at one of their practice spaces, at Liam’s suggestion that he _definitely_ wouldn’t do it, no _way_.

Except he’d bollocksed it and fallen further than he thought he would, and then rolled off another riser, apparently knocking himself unconscious in the process, and shattering his wrist, breaking a leg, and dislocating a shoulder.

“You know how Tommo is about dares,” Harry says, laughing once, without any humor.

“An idiot,” Nick supplies, feeling a bit dazed. “But he’s always like that, so.”

“He was in surgery,” Harry continues. “They had to, like, reset his leg it was so fucked, and put pins in his wrist, I think? And he probably has a concussion. But he’s full of drugs, now, so he’s out.”

“Jesus,” Nick says, feeling horrified and a bit awed. That’s an impressive amount of injuries to acquire, even for an idiot with a skateboard he barely knows how to ride in the first place on top of a complex about never turning down a challenge.

“Liam’s beside himself,” Harry says. “Absolutely wracked with guilt, thinks it’s all his fault like Lou wouldn’t’ve probably done it on his own anyway, and won’t hear anything else. Zayn had to take him home, he was making such a scene in the waiting room while Lou was in surgery.”

“Poor thing,” Nick says absently, not feeling terribly bothered about Liam. He’s too busy picturing Louis banged up and bleeding, looking small in an uncomfortable hospital bed. “Are you at the hospital now?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, yawning audibly. “They’ll try and punt me off soon though, I reckon. Already sent Niall away to ‘rest.’”

“And not you?”

“Wouldn’t go,” Harry says stubbornly. “Wanna be here when he wakes up.”

Nick lets out a breath. “Good,” he says, trying not to feel anything unreasonable twist jealously in his stomach. “Someone ought to be.”

“His mum is coming, obviously, but she’s got to find someone to watch the babies, I guess, so it might not be for a day or two.” Harry lets out a little whine. “Fuck, Nick, the noise his head made when it hit the ground--”

“I know, love,” Nick says soothingly, even though he doesn’t, obviously. “Don’t think about it, yeah?”

“He’ll be alright,” Harry assures him quietly, for what must be the fiftieth time. He’d said so at least twice before he’d even bothered to explain what’d happened. “He’s not gonna like, die or anything.”

He’s mostly reassuring himself, not Nick, especially since Nick’s hasn’t suggested anything of the sort, but still. Jesus. _Can you even_ die _from falling off of things?_ Nick thinks stupidly, before realizing that yes, of course you can, especially if you hit your head properly.

“‘Course not,” he agrees instead.

There’s a long moment of silence between them, and Nick doesn’t know what to do with it. Fuck, he’s no good at serious.

“Thank you,” Nick says, a bit awkwardly. “For phoning.” He knows most people wouldn’t have ever thought to tell him, and the few that might’ve probably wouldn’t have bothered anyway.

“I thought you’d want to know,” Harry says quietly. “Even if things with you two are, like…”

“I did. I mean, I do, I guess,” Nick says, sighing and cutting him off. He doesn’t want to get into this. It’d been hard enough to dance around it with Harry when things had gone tits up with Louis to start with, and that was months ago. Still, even if he’s not sure it’s anything he’s entitled to anymore, he’s glad Harry’s told him. He imagines reading about it in the papers tomorrow, unprepared, and shudders a bit. “Thanks.”

There’s a long silence. Nick supposes Harry’s weighing out whether or not he wants to say that Nick can come see Louis, if he likes, and that makes his spine stiffen a bit. If Harry offers, he’ll probably do it, and fuck knows that won’t help anything.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asks instead before Harry has the chance.

“No, no,” Harry says immediately. “‘M’alright here. Cal’s gone to find tea that doesn’t taste like it’s been wrung out of a dirty towel, so we’re sorted.”

“Alright,” Nick says, not feeling entirely convinced. “You’ll let me know if there’s anything, though, yeah?”

“‘Course,” Harry promises, his jaw popping with another yawn. “Gonna sleep a bit, I think, until he’s awake.”

“Good,” Nick tells him. “Take care of yourself, popstar.”

“You too, Nick,” Harry says. Then he rings off, and it’s just Nick and his vodka and his quiet kitchen, phone going dim in his hands.

-

Louis wakes up before sunrise the next morning, apparently, thirsty and headachey but not in any great pain. Nick only knows because Harry texts him briefly, which helps a bit when there’s a great flashing ticker on the television during a rerun of Fashion Police announcing that Louis Tomlinson of One Direction was rushed to a hospital last night in ‘critical but stable condition’ following an accident at rehearsal. During the news break, they repeat it, this time with footage of a flashing ambulance, although fuck knows if it’s actually the one Louis’d been taken off in. Nick blanches anyway, and shuts it off.

For the next several days he oscillates between pretending nothing’s amiss whatsoever and a mounting temptation to bunk everything else off and show up at the hospital unannounced, just to check that Louis’ alive and conscious with his own eyes. Harry keeps him updated constantly, but it’s hard not to want to see it for himself. Mostly the only thing that stops him doing it is the way he imagines Louis would look at him if he did -- unsure what he’s doing there, probably, confused and maybe a bit pitying.

So he tries his best to lean towards the ignoring-it end of the spectrum. It’s possible he drives everyone even more mad than usual at work, but if his mouth is running constantly, it keeps his brain that much quieter.

It works well enough, until it doesn’t.

It’s just after dinner on a Thursday night when he snaps, and picks up his mobile while he’s still got a mouthful of one of the muffins Daisy’d brought over the week before. He dials without giving himself time to think, and forces the muffin down too quickly, so he’s coughing a bit when someone picks up, and then Louis’ raspy voice says, “Yes?”

“Oh,” Nick splutters. “Um. Hi. I didn’t think you’d answer?” There’s a pause. “It’s Nick, by the way.”

“I know,” Louis says slowly. His voice sounds a bit slurred and fuzzy, like he’s doped up on painkillers. Maybe that’s why he answered, actually. “You’re still in my phone.”

“Oh,” Nick says again. “That’s good, then.”

Louis doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “Did you need something?” he asks tiredly after minute. “You rang me.”

“Right,” Nick says. He’d sort of forgotten that bit. “Just… checking to see if you’re all right, I suppose. I mean, you’re not, obviously, you’re in hospital, but, like.”

There’s another pause, and when Louis answers he sounds a bit out of breath. “I am,” he agrees. “‘S’fucking boring here.”

Nick closes his eyes, picturing Louis propped up in his hospital bed, looked bruised and battered and tired. He’s susceptible to pills, Nick knows, even the ones for his allergies making him go loopy sometimes, so he supposes whatever painkillers they’ve got him on are doing his head in.

“Aren’t your four musketeers keeping you company?” Nick asks.

Louis snorts softly. “Won’t bloody leave me alone for a moment,” he says, not sounding at all put out about it. “Niall tried to follow me into the toilet yesterday.”

“Did he?”

“Nah,” Louis admits. “Not allowed out of bed. Got one of those, whatsits. Catheters. Bag of my own piss strapped next to the bed at all times. Very sexy.” He exhales heavily, sounding fatigued.

“Sounds it,” Nick says, softer than he means to. “When are they letting you out?”

“Dunno,” Louis says. “A week? Two, maybe? Probably going to have another surgery to get more pins in my wrist, and they want to wait until the stitches in my head come out so they can make me have another twelve thousand scans to make sure my brain isn’t permanently damaged. Hazza says it won’t matter if it is, since I was mad already.”

Nick smiles at that. Nick’s never been able to properly figure their relationship out, Louis and Harry -- the closest he can come is _brotherly_ , except he doesn’t know any brothers who gave each other experimental handjobs when they were on a televised singing program together, but it’s the best he’s got. All he knows is that they love each other fiercely, and can drive each other absolutely around the bend like no one else.

Since the accident, Harry’s been on the phone to Nick almost every night, clearly totally thrown off by it all and unsure what to do with it. The night before, he’d said he was tempted to smother Louis with a pillow because he’d been demanding Harry comb his hair every hour, and then after a long minute, admitted how fucking _angry_ he was with Louis. He’d been just beside Louis when he’d fallen, apparently, and he clearly hadn’t taken Nick’s advice not to think on the sound his head had made when it’d cracked onto the ground.

“He’s worried,” Nick says. “Think you gave him a right good scare.”

“Suppose I did,” Louis says quietly, sounding almost chagrined.

“So where are the stitches?” Nick asks. “Gonna have a great scar all over that swoon-inducing face?”

Louis scoffs, and then coughs a bit. “Nah. Back of my head. Had to shave a patch of my hair to get at it. I look like a tit.”

“Between that and the bag of piss, I can only imagine,” Nick murmurs.

There’s a long moment where they both just breathe into the phone at each other. “You sure you’re all right?” Nick asks eventually.

He expects a joke, or a deflection, but Louis just sighs. “Guess so. Hurts like fuck, sometimes. But I’ve got a drip with morphine, so if I hit the button enough I just wind up sleeping.”

“Good,” Nick says firmly. He doesn’t care at all to think about Louis in pain and unable to do anything for it.

“It’ll be better when I’m out,” Louis says. His voice slurs a bit, again. “Sit around on my arse for a while. Might actually get a rest for once.”

Nick thinks about calling it the lie it clearly is -- if he knows anything about Louis, he’s having absolute fits about letting people down this close to the start of tour, twisting himself up into knots that he won’t be able to perform like he needs to. That’s the sort of thing Louis is best at, but he also works very hard not to let anyone know, so Nick stays silent.

“Good,” he says instead. “Rest up, yeah? Teenaged girls across the world are holding, like, candlelight vigils for you, I heard. Seems a bit rude not to get well and let them get back to their lives.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Louis says dryly.

“See that you do.”

There’s a pause, and Nick wonders if Louis is going to ask if he’ll visit. The thought makes him feel incredibly uncomfortable.

“Listen, I’ve got to go, but it’s good to hear your voice,” he says. “Stop falling off shit, all right?”

“I’ll try,” Louis promises.

For a moment, Nick thinks he might say something else, but then Louis rings off, and there’s just quiet.

-

The timing of his holiday is almost startlingly good, in the end. He knows he’s driving everyone at the studio around the bend, trying to keep himself aggressively distracted so that he doesn’t spend all his time worrying about Louis. He hasn’t called again, and neither has Louis, but he thinks about it all the bloody time if he lets himself. He’s constantly remembering a story he read once about a woman who went skiing and fell and hit her head, and when she went to hospital all the doctors agreed she was fine, released her, and then a fortnight later she was dead.

It’s not a very productive line of thought.

The show’s on break for a full two weeks, though, and in a fit of madness, Nick had agreed to housesit for his parents for the first of those while they go to the south of France for their anniversary. It’s not exactly a posh holiday, but he’s felt borderline wrung out, lately, stretched a bit too thin. He’s still feeling guilty that he hadn’t come up for a proper Christmas holiday last year on top of that, so somehow this is how he’s decided to make up for it. Anyway, he thinks it might force him to relax, getting out of his own bloody flat and London and everything else that he loves, but sometimes feels exhausted by all the same. And it’ll give his mum a sense of ease, too, knowing that someone’s keeping her ficuses watered.

He also knows, though, that he’s not particularly needed -- the house can watch itself, ficuses included. He’s fucking off to Majorca with Alexa for the second week of break, which just confirms it -- his presence is pretty much unnecessary, from an objective standpoint. Still, he appreciates the illusion that he’ll be doing _something_ useful for a week all the same.

He drives up on a Saturday morning. His parents have already gone, catching a red-eye flight to ‘avoid the bleeding lines,’ according to his dad. Nick hadn’t really had the heart to tell him that there’s always lines, no matter how early you get up.

He lets himself in with the same key he’s had since primary school, his carelessly packed bag dropping in the entry as he stretches his neck and flicks the lights on. The one at the top landing is out, he notes. He’ll have to see if he can remember where the spare light bulbs are.

The house is too empty and quiet with no one else there, and a bit creepy for it, so once he’s toed off his shoes he goes through methodically turning on lights and tellies, trying to fill it up.

His mum’s left a long note on the dining room table, he discovers, three pages of detailed instructions on how to fill the hummingbird feeder in the back garden and what to do if the hot water goes out. He rolls his eyes, smiling fondly, and folds the note, setting it aside.

The house smells familiar as he walks through it, feels like home the way it always does. His dad’s unfinished crossword is sitting on the dining table, and mum’s been burning a cinnamon candle again, and the only thing that feels wrong is how quiet it is.

There’s half of a roast left in the fridge, along with more instructions on how Nick should heat it up. He thinks about feeling vaguely insulted -- he’s nearly thirty and he hasn’t managed to starve to death yet, thanks -- but after a moment’s consideration, follows the directions word for word.

It still comes out chewy and a bit cold in the center anyway, and he eats alone on the sofa as the sun sets, hunched over the coffee table.

-

He wakes after a nap late the next afternoon to his phone vibrating on the table. For a moment, he hasn’t any idea where he is -- the light streaming in through the blinds is wrong, and there’s a twinge in his back, and he’s not quite sure what’s going on until he realizes: the sofa in his parents’ sitting room.

And his phone is still rattling insistently. He grabs at it, nearly knocking a glass of water as well as his glasses off the table in the process. His eyes are too blurry to see the display, so he answers blindly, feeling massively groggy and out of it.

“‘Lo?” he asks.

There’s a pause, and then a breath. “Nick?”

He sits up, then, feeling suddenly more awake. “Louis?” he says. It comes out a question, but he knows that voice even if his brain does feel slightly addled.

“Hi,” Louis says. “Are you busy?”

Nick looks around him, brushing the crumbs from the Tim Tams he’d had earlier off his jumper. “Not really,” he says honestly.

“Okay, look,” Louis says, sounding firm. It’s his _I’ve practiced this_ voice, Nick recognizes. “I need to ask you something, and it’s not, like, a big deal or anything, so don’t go and make it one, but…” He trails off.

“Yeah?” Nick asks.

“Can I come round yours for a while?” Louis asks too quickly, like he’s trying to get it over with all at once.

“You -- what?” Nick asks, startled. They haven’t seen each other in months. They haven’t even talked besides that one phone call when Louis’d been in hospital. Nick knows he was released  a bit ago, from Harry, but as far as he knows, Louis’ back home with his mum, still bandaged up and immobile, and not particularly in any state to pop round from Doncaster for a visit with his -- whatever. His whatever Nick is to him.

“I need to come stay at yours,” Louis repeats, sounding firm, like Nick won’t argue with him or acknowledge how strange it is for him to ask that way.

“Why?” Nick asks warily.

Louis exhales heavily, and when he answers, he sounds sharp. “Because I’m stuck at my mum’s and I’m bloody useless and I’m losing my _mind_ here.”

Nick hesitates. “Aren’t you still, like--” _Really fucked up_ , he doesn’t say.

“Yeah,” Louis snaps. “That’s the point. My mum’s got two new babies to take care of plus the rest of the girls, and the house and work on top of that, and she doesn’t need me lying about in her lounge and asking her to help me to the fucking toilet every time I need to piss.” He pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice sounds smaller. “I’m just causing her more fucking trouble.”

“So you want to come to mine?” Nick asks, a bit dumbly.

“Well,” says Louis peevishly, seeming annoyed that Nick’s daring to ask for clarification. “Everyone else I might ask is busy with rehearsals and other shit. You’re the only person I could think of that hasn’t got anything better to do.”

“Oi,” Nick says, just on principle. “I have got, like, several jobs, you realize?”

Louis just scoffs.

“‘M not in London, anyway,” Nick says. “I’m at my mum and dad’s while they’re on holiday.”

For an instant, he’s a bit put out that Louis apparently isn’t listening to his show, or else he might’ve already know that it’s on break. That’s a bit irrational, though, and he’d made a very firm, albeit drunken New Years resolution the year before to try to stop being so irrational when it comes to Louis Tomlinson. At least a bit.

“Oh,” Louis says, sounding -- disappointed, maybe?

“I mean,” Nick says, before he can actually think about it. “You could always come round here, I suppose? ‘S’just me.”

There’s a pause down the line. “Could I?” Louis asks tentatively.

Nick sits up straighter. He hadn’t expected _that_. He’d mostly offered on instinct, an inborn nature to be polite that comes with an accompanying expectation to be declined. Louis’ missed the cue for that second part, apparently.

He should say no. He should absolutely, without a doubt say no. If nothing good would’ve come from Nick visiting Louis in the hospital, there’s no bloody reason at all to bring him round to stay at his parents’ house.

He must be going soft, though, because there’s something about Louis’ quiet voice asking that totally obliterates his defenses.

“I mean,” he hedges. “If you like.”

“You wouldn’t mind?” Louis asks again. Nick can practically _hear_ the strain in his voice, and that’s what does him in. Louis doesn’t ask for things, let alone twice. He must be desperate if he’s asking for a favor, especially one from _Nick_.

Fuck it, then. Nick’s always been an idiot when it comes to Louis. Why stop now?

“Yeah,” Nick says, more confidently than he feels. “Come stay, if you like.”

“Only if you’re sure,” Louis hedges.

Nick frowns. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it.” It comes out sharper than he means to, but that doesn’t stop him from adding, “I don’t do that to people.”

There’s a long silence, so long that Nick might’ve thought Louis’d hung up if he couldn’t still hear him breathing down the line.

“Honestly,” Nick says, forcing his tone a bit softer. “It’s no trouble, if that’s what you like.”

“If you’re sure,” Louis says cautiously. He sounds further away, somehow.

“D’you need me to come get you?” Nick asks, digging a thumb into his temple. “Don’t reckon you can drive much with your leg in a cast.”

“I can get a car,” Louis says. “Text me the address?”

“Yeah, alright,” Nick agrees. There’s another heavy pause. “Wouldn’t, like…” he starts, unable to help himself.

“What?” Louis asks.

“If you think you’re being, like, a burden or whatever--” Louis starts to make a noise of protest, but Nick just barrels on. “Won’t you just feel like one here as well?”

Louis stops trying to argue, possibly considering that point. Nick’s not sure -- he’s never really sure what Louis is thinking, always feels a step behind.

“You don’t count,” Louis says eventually.

Vaguely, Nick thinks he should feel insulted by that. Something about Louis’ voice, though, tentative and quiet, makes it hard.

“Thanks,” he says instead, trying to keep his tone light.

“Text me the address and I’ll be ‘round tomorrow,” Louis says, suddenly all business again, the softness gone from his voice.

“Yeah, alright,” Nick says, and then rings off.

He texts the address to Louis a moment later, and finds his hand is shaking just a bit. He suspects he shouldn’t have agreed to this. Possibly, there’s something permanently wired the wrong way in his head that makes it impossible for him to recognize a shite Louis Tomlinson-related choice when it’s staring him in the face.

He supposed he’ll just have to learn to live with it, if that’s the case.

-

He does fuck all for the rest of the day save for text Collette too many times, trudge aimlessly around the back field for a bit, and eat too many Wagon Wheels for tea.

By the time he sits down for a six-hour stretch of Kardashians, he’s exhausted, despite having done nothing with his time at all.

-

He sleeps on the sofa again, so he wakes in the morning to a sharp twinge in his neck and the sound of a car door slamming.

He flops around a bit -- his glasses are somewhere, but who bloody knows where. Eventually he finds them stuffed inside one of his slippers, and he shoves them both on before padding over to the door, a bit stumbly and useless without any coffee in his bloodstream yet.

When he opens it, Louis is there, standing in the road next to a shiny black car, balanced at the armpits on two enormous crutches.

The first thing Nick notices is how bloody _small_ he looks. Louis’ in an enormous hooded sweatshirt and trackies that seem near to swallowing him up, the hood up over his hair and the cuff of his left leg tucked into a thick wool sock. There are a few stray scrapes and bruises along one side of his jaw, and on the back of his head there’s a tuft of hair stuck up at a bizarre angle that Nick suspects must be from the patch they’d shaved.

Louis’ right side -- the one he’d fallen on -- is nearly all done up in casts. There’s bright purple plaster wrapped around his wrist, shoving the sleeve of his sweatshirt up awkwardly, and he’s dangling the whole arm uselessly over the padded top of the crutch, clearly unable to grab onto the handle properly because of the way the cast straddles his thumb and fingers.

His leg is even worse. The cast isn’t colored like the one on his wrist, but it goes from his foot to just over his knee. He hasn’t even bothered to try and fit his trackies over the bulk of it -- they’ve just been hacked off carelessly at the right knee, a few loose strings dangling over the top edge of the cast.

“Fuck,” Nick says to himself, and then immediately hopes Louis is too far away to hear.

He must be, because he doesn’t scowl. He hasn’t even seemed to notice Nick yet, in fact, too busy trying to sling a small overnight bag over his neck by the strap so that he can carry it and hobble up the front steps on his own.

There’s another man -- a driver? Nick doesn’t recognize him, anyway -- unloading the boot of the car. He says something to Louis, who pulls a face and shakes his head.

Then Louis looks up, and he sees Nick, and freezes.

Nick waves, and immediately feels like a prat for it. “Hi,” he calls, lowering his hand and slowly heading down the steps to where the car is parked. “D’you want help?”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Louis grits out, tangled impressively in the bag’s strap.

“He’s being an idiot,” the driver says, rolling his eyes as he hauls out another larger bag. “Doesn’t want anyone to help him, gets stroppy when you offer even though he’s weaker than a kitten.”

“Not surprised to hear it,” Nick says, biting back a smile, and Louis glares.

“Great,” he says sourly, scowling in turn from Nick to the driver. “Glad to know everyone on the bloody planet is going to act like they’re my mum now. Do either of you want to offer to change my nappy, while we’re at it?”

If the driver’s bothered by this, he doesn’t show it, rolling his eyes again, this time a bit fondly. Nick is almost startled by how familiar that look is, and for a second, he wonders if it’s just the natural result of being around Louis Tomlinson for very long -- you can’t help but feel fond, even when he’s being a pain in the arse.

“D’you want the wheelchair as well?” the driver asks, gesturing towards the back of the car.

“ _No_ ,” Louis says vehemently. “The crutches are _fine_ , honestly.” He sounds a bit desperate, and even though he’s clearly shit at walking with the crutches, Nick doesn’t have the heart to say so.

“Probably be a bit hard to get around with it,” he says instead. As they go slowly up the walk, he feels the sudden urge to put a steadying hand on the small of Louis’ back, and fights it off.

They get Louis’ bags unloaded just inside the doorway, piled in an unceremonious heap. He’s got a fair amount of shit, and Nick wonders if he’s even bothered to unpack from the last -- wherever he was. Nick’s given up on trying to keep track of their movements, and just lets Harry mention it when they speak if it’s important. It’s impossible to keep up -- he’s learned that well enough.

“Anything else?” the driver asks before he turns to go. Louis is leaning next to the front door, looking a bit sulky, but he manages a genuine enough smile for the driver before waving him off with a quiet _thanks_.

Nick bites the inside of his cheek a bit -- it’s always disorienting to be reminded that Louis isn’t half as much of an arsehole as he’d like it to seem.

Then the driver goes, shutting the door behind him, and it’s just Nick and Louis, cramped too near in the front hall of Nick’s parents’ home.

Jesus.

“Well,” Louis says, letting his face settle back into a carefully impassive expression. “Give me the grand tour, then.”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Might be a bit outside your abilities, at the moment, seeing as you could barely hobble up the front steps.”

Louis scowls, and reaches out to whack Nick in the ankle with one of his crutches. He nearly topples over himself in the process, but still seems pleased when Nick winces with it. “I don’t _hobble_ ,” he says, far too haughty for someone who’s covered in bandages and and a mangled sweatsuit.

Nick ignores it and picks up Louis’ enormous wheely bag. “You can have my room,” he says, feeling wrong-footed, like he’s playing the role of a bellboy or something in a strange play.

“Aren’t you sleeping in it?” Louis asks warily, and Nick sighs.

“No,” he explains, trying to be patient and possibly missing the mark. “I’m on the couch. So you’re alright.”

They trudge through the hall together, passing through the sitting room on the way to the stairs. Nick plunks the case at the foot of the stairs -- he’ll haul it up later, when he feels less like a glorified valet.

“D’you want to go up?” he asks. He’s just now realizing that he’s not sure what to do with Louis here. Is he meant to like, entertain him? Take care of him?

When Nick had been in primary school, he’d gotten tonsillitis, and his mum had brought him a little bell he could ring when he needed something so he wouldn’t have to shout for her and hurt his throat. She’d also set up a tray in his bed so they could play rummy, and Nick could read comics on it while she knit in the armchair so he wouldn’t have to be alone.

He wonders if he’s meant to do either of those things for Louis, or if he would even know how.

“Guess so,” Louis says. He doesn’t seem to know what to do either, which at least makes Nick feel a bit better.

The stairs are narrow, but Louis thunks determinedly towards them, sticking his tongue between his teeth as he tries to work his crutches properly. He’s still got his smaller bag slung awkwardly around his neck, and by the third step, he’s collided with the wall and the bannister so hard that Nick has to press a steadying hand to the small of his back to keep him from falling backwards.

“I’ve _got_ it,” Louis insists, glancing back over his shoulder at Nick. “I don’t need help.”

Nick lets out an audible sigh as Louis plods up another step, his bad leg swinging wide. “Yes you do, that’s why you’re bloody _here_ ,” Nick reminds him.

“That’s not -- no,” Louis insists. He’s nearly halfway up the stairs, and Nick makes sure to stay just a step behind him in case he starts to topple again. “My mum was fussing. That’s all.”

“Fine,” Nick says. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

They finally reach the upstairs landing, and Nick shimmies around Louis to lead the way to his old room, pointing out the toilet as they go. He hesitates for a moment, just outside his bedroom door, because suddenly he feels too exposed. In what world would it _possibly_ be a good idea to let Louis bloody Tomlinson sleep among his old things, on the stupid rocket ship sheets his mum insists on keeping even though he hasn’t actually used them since year six? _Christ_.

He can’t very well put Louis in his parents’ room -- he can barely bring himself to open the door, most days, expecting to be shouted at if he does -- and the spare bedroom’s been turned into Liv’s own little cavern for visiting, which means there’s no small chance that Louis would be greeted with the sight of his own face torn out of _Heat_ and stuck up on the walls from the moment he opened the door.

He could change his mind and let Louis take the sofa, but they’ve already come this far, all the way up the treacherous stairs, and Nick thinks it might make him look… weak, or something. Like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Which, incidentally, he doesn’t.

So he shakes it off and, for lack of a better option, opens the door, letting Louis in ahead of him.

“Mm,” Louis says, shuffling in. He reaches the foot of Nick’s bed and sits down carefully, letting his crutches thud down on the woven rug. With a small huff of breath, like the stairs have done him in, he sets about untangling his bag from around his neck. “So where’re your family?” he asks.

“South of France,” Nick says. “Er -- hang on.” He dashes down the stairs, and returns a moment later hauling Louis’ bigger suitcase with him. “So, like… anywhere?” he asks dumbly.

“‘S’your room,” Louis says with a shrug. He squirms up the bed, propping himself against the headboard, and pulls his phone out of the pocket of his trackies. Nick flushes, embarrassingly, and sets the bag at the foot of the bed where Louis isn’t likely to trip over it.

“Why are you sleeping on the sofa?” Louis asks curiously, cocking his head as he looks up from his phone.

“‘S’just easier, I suppose?” Nick hedges, shrugging.

He doesn’t particularly feel the need to explain to Louis how out of place he feels whenever he does wind up taking his old room. It feels like there’s a disconnect, sometimes, between the Nick that used to sleep and do his homework and wank off and mouth along to the radio in here, and who Nick is now, and sleeping in this room only highlights it, makes him feel too big and too small for his skin all at once.

“Also I don’t like an east facing window,” he lies. “Hard to have a lie-in.”

Louis snorts. “Y’know there are curtains for that.”

Nick just shrugs again.

“Listen,” Louis starts, fiddling with the frayed cuff of his sweatshirt. “I know this is, like.” He trails off. “So just, y’know.”

“Right,” Nick agrees hastily. He doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want Louis to try and be polite to him.

“‘M full of pain pills,” Louis says. “I’ll probably just, like, sleep all day, so you don’t have to like… entertain me or whatever.”

“Nothing particularly entertaining to do here anyway,” Nick says. “Except keep up with the Kardashians, if that interests you.”

Louis’ mouth quirks into a smile before he can help himself. He hasn’t shaved in a while, Nick notices, and he’s got a bit of scruff going on. It mostly covers up the leftover scratches and bruises that trail up the right side of his face, and Nick can’t help but be a little charmed and distressed by it all at once.

“Maybe after tea,” Louis says. “Just gonna rest now for a bit.” He shifts around on the bed, frowning like he’s considering trying to get up again before apparently thinking better of it. “Actually, d’you think--” He wrinkles his nose a bit. “In my bag? My laptop?”

He doesn’t elaborate, clearly not willing to actually say the words and _ask_ , but Nick just nods and fetches it for him, handing over the banged-up Macbook before backing towards the open door again.

“Right,” he says. “If you’re good, I’ll just… be downstairs? Shout if you need anything.”

“Okay,” Louis says, opening his computer. The blue glow from the screen starting up illuminates his face softly as he glances up once at Nick before he goes out and shuts the door behind him.

-

An hour later, there’s an alarming series of thumps from upstairs while Nick’s half-heartedly sorting out a playlist. It’s not really for the show, or any gigs, and it hasn’t got a theme, particularly, just… something he’s putting together.

There’s another thump, further down the hall this time, so he stands and walks to the foot of the stairs. “Louis?” he calls up, reluctant to actually go and investigate.

There’s no response, but a long moment later he hears the toilet flush, and then the progressive step-thud of Louis getting slowly back to Nick’s room, shutting the door behind him.

Nick frowns, feeling strange -- like there’s an invisible line demarcating the upstairs and downstairs, their spaces clearly separated. He wonders if this is how the parents of teenagers feel, and then instantly feels horrible about the thought, given how he’s had his cock inside Louis before.

At least Louis was never a teenager when that happened, anyway.

He settles back in on the couch, turning his attention back to his playlist, and is horrified to find himself tempted to put something very soppy and broken heart-y on it all of a sudden.

-

Louis thunks down the stairs in the late afternoon, still in his tattered sweatshirt and trackies, but now with his hair sticking up like he’d slept on it funny. There’s pillow lines on the side of his cheek, and something hot and fond twists in Nick’s stomach when he thinks about Louis’ face in his bed, smushed in his sheets, possibly drooling a bit like he does when he’s knackered, until Louis opens his mouth and announces imperiously, “I’m starved.”

The fondness scatters, and Nick, despite the vague notion that he ought to at least be a good host, if not nursemaid, prickles. “Okay?” he says.

“So feed me,” Louis says, squinching up his nose a bit.

“Feed yourself,” Nick shrugs.

Louis’ scowl deepens, and he gestures at himself with his bad arm. “Obviously, I--” he starts, and then cuts himself off.

Nick cocks his head, curious to see if Louis will say it: _I can’t_. He doesn’t, though, visibly floundering for a moment before he settles on “Dunno where the kitchen is.”

“Through there,” Nick says, pointing vaguely to the back of the house. “There’s part of a roast, if you want it, although I ate all the good bits yesterday. Anything else is up to you.”

Louis -- who, in as long as Nick has known him, has never once struggled to insinuate himself into a circumstance like it’s his right to have been there all along -- just stands there, for once seeming conspicuously out of place. He shifts his weight from one crutch to another uneasily, wincing a bit when he leans to the right. Nick tries his best to ignore him, turning back to his laptop, but he can _feel_ Louis just looking at him plaintively, and after a not very long at all moment, Nick can feel himself crumbling.

“Fine,” he says, shutting his computer. “I can do beans and toast, if you want, but that’s about as much as I’m qualified to do in the kitchen, so if that doesn’t suit you you’re on your own.”

He half expects another smartarse response, but Louis just half-smiles and nods once, quickly.

Fifteen minutes later, they’re sat across each other at Nick’s parents’ dining room table, both of them clearly trying to pretend there’s nothing odd about it.

“Haven’t had anyone cook for me in a dog’s age,” Louis says, his mouth half full of beans.

“Dunno if this counts as cooking,” Nick says skeptically. It’d mostly been toasting, and a bit of opening a tin. He’s not sure that qualifies.

“Still beyond my abilities,” Louis says with a shrug. He splatters beans around a bit, and doesn’t seem to notice. Nick remembers, suddenly, how shit a cook Louis is. It’d always been a bit comforting, really, knowing there was someone out there as crap at it as Nick is. Harry always looks at Nick with a bit of undisguised disappointment when he doesn’t know how to do something like deglaze a pan.

“Weren’t you just at your mum’s, anyway?” Nick asks, trying to shake himself out what feels uncomfortably like reminiscing. “You’re always on about what a bang up cook she is.”

“She is,” Louis agrees. “But that’s, like, for all of us. Meant, like, cooking just for me, y’know?”

Nick does know, unfortunately, and it sets another wave of feeling off in his chest that he’d rather not get into right now, or possibly ever. It’s too close to comfort and homeyness and the way it used to feel to be holed up in his flat with just Louis, everything else shut out firmly, eating shit food they’d bunged together and watching shit television and ignoring just about everything else as best they could.

“You’re too easy for it if you’re going doe-eyed over beans and toast,” Nick says, trying for something light-hearted. It misses the mark, he thinks.

Louis shrugs again. “Maybe,” he says quietly, and then the rest of the meal is mostly silent.

-

Louis is tired again after they eat, so he trudges up the stairs again, insisting he do it alone. Nick watches him go, perched carefully on the edge of the sofa in case Louis starts to plummet head over arse, but he manages to bump his way to the top by himself.

At the top landing, he turns and smiles at Nick, lips together, and then wanders off down the hall slowly, the sound of his crutches receding until it’s just Nick alone again in his parents’ lounge, the television flickering silently.

He goes to sleep too warm and out of sorts.

-

Louis doesn’t spend the next day holed up in Nick’s bedroom again. Nick had thought he might, honestly, but Louis apparently has other plans, because he trudges into the lounge at half past seven, still looking cozy but apparently having changed into a new hoodie and mangled pair of trackies, again cut off at the knee to fit over his cast.

“Move,” he says, nudging Nick’s legs with the end of his crutches.

“You move,” Nick says nonsensically, scrubbing at one eye with the back of his hand. He curls his legs in a bit, though, and Louis takes that as invitation to sit down awkwardly on the sofa, carefully arranging his bad leg up on the table and cradling his right arm against his chest.

“What d’you want?” Nick mumbles. It must be very early. It must be too early to be awake at all, and he’s got no idea why Louis is up. He’s seen Louis sleep until well after three in the afternoon before. Nothing right now is making sense.

“Breakfast,” Louis says. “Tea.”

Nick whines, and shoves his face into the pillow before staggering into an upright position.

“Cereal,” he says. He’s not awake enough for this, and that means he’s not awake enough to argue.

He kicks off the blanket he’d been sleeping under, leaving it in a ball on Louis’ lap. He’s suddenly aware that he’s just in his pants and a ratty vest, not anything actually resembling proper sleepwear, and then tries very firmly not to be bothered by it. It’s his bloody house. He can wear what he pleases.

“And we only have coffee,” he lies as he stumbles towards the kitchen.

The pained noise Louis makes behind him is a little satisfying, at least.

-

“I’m bored,” Louis whines. He’s said so about ten times already this morning, and Nick’s been gritting his teeth each time.

“Read a book, then,” he says impatiently. He’s busy watching the television, and checking his phone a bit compulsively to see who’s texted him -- mostly it’s Pixie, with pictures of a weird taxidermy-something she’s buying, apparently. It’s not his job to make sure Louis is entertained.

Louis just pulls a face at him like that’s the stupidest suggestion of all time.

They’re still on the sofa, Louis still with his leg propped up, only now he’s taken Nick’s blanket and wrapped it firmly around himself. Nick had half expected Louis to retreat upstairs again after he’d fixed them both cereal for breakfast, but apparently he’s content to stay where he is, gradually sprawling over more and more of the sofa until he’s taking most of it up, somehow.

So Nick busies himself finding trousers, making coffee as well as a mug of tea that Louis eyes curiously but doesn’t comment on, and they settle into a silence that’s not comfortable, necessarily, but not _uncomfortable_ , either, the Kardashians murmuring softly at them from the telly.

“I want to watch the footie match,” Louis announces an hour later.

“Too bad,” Nick says. He doesn’t even bother to ask what one Louis means.

“Christ. Nowhere for a man to go and watch football anymore,” Louis complains. “Phoebe and Daisy banned it while I was round my mum’s, too. Apparently it’s ‘boring.’ Kids these days, honestly.” He shakes his head a bit despairingly.

“‘S’that why you came here, then?” Nick asks. “You weren’t getting adequate free rein of the remote control?”

It comes out mostly like a joke, but the truth is, he’s genuinely curious. There are about a thousand other people Louis might’ve gone to stay with before him, given how things are between them now. Or, like -- aren’t, maybe. They way things aren’t anymore.

And he knows that Louis, despite the loud and frequent protestations, probably wants someone to coddle him while he’s injured, just a bit, loathe though he might be to admit it. Probably not Nick, specifically, but _someone_ , and it seems like Louis’ mum would be the best for it, even if Louis insists he’d been a burden. Nick suspects those claims are entirely bullshit -- Jay’s probably in knots that she can’t take care of him properly.

“Mostly,” Louis says with a shrug.

“Should’ve gone round Liam’s or something, then, if you wanted to watch footie. Poor planning on your part, really.”

Louis shifts, the way he does when Nick accidentally stumbles upon a topic he’s uncomfortable with.

“I think they’re like, a bit fed up with me,” he says, a little cautiously. “The lads, I mean.”

“Doubt it,” Nick says, entirely unconvinced. Those five are bizarrely codependent. He imagines they’re having even worse kittens than Louis’ mum, what with Louis depriving them of the opportunity to dote on him. Harry’d been angry that Louis’d hurt himself, yeah, but he’d probably knock over several children on the way to wash Louis’ hair if he asked him to anyway.

“Hm,” Louis says. He doesn’t sound like he quite believes him, but when Nick starts to say as much, Louis shushes him, and turns the volume up on the television.

-

Eventually, Nick’s legs start to go all pins and needles, so he has to get up from the sofa in the interest of keeping his muscles from atrophying, and that’s when it starts.

Louis follows him around like a duckling.

He’s clearly bored, but that doesn’t make it any less disorienting, and then aggravating. Nick gets up to find a bag of crisps and suddenly Louis is at his heels, clambering around too fast on his crutches like he’s trying his hardest to aggravate his injuries. Nick goes to do the washing up from their cereal bowls and beans and toast the night before, and Louis is limping around the kitchen behind him, pointing out spots he’s allegedly missing. Nick goes to the bleeding _toilet_ , and Louis tries to follow him up the stairs until Nick has to physically restrain him and tell him to _stay_.

When he gets back, Louis is waiting for him. Nick is torn between a snort and a sigh.

“I’m going outside for a moment,” he says, forcing himself not to add _because you’re driving me bloody mad_ at the end.

He hopes Louis will just go back to the sofa and _sit there_ as he gathers up his jacket with the pack of emergency cigarettes he has stashed in one of its pockets, but he’s not at all surprised when he only makes it halfway down the back garden steps before he hears Louis, following behind him too quickly. He does some sort of weird hop-tumble down the last step, and nearly falls when his crutch lands wrong. The only thing that stops him from smashing his face against Nick’s mum’s planter of petunias is the fact that Nick’s in the way and bodily stops him from doing so.

“Christ,” Nick says, carefully righting him and frowning. “Stop it, you’re going to hurt yourself worse.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Louis insists, trying to squirm out of Nick’s grasp. He lets Louis go once he’s sure he won’t fall, and takes a step back, surprised to realize that he’s suddenly _angry_.

“You _are_ , and it’ll be your own fault _again_ because you won’t _sit bloody still_ ,” Nick snaps, stalking away.

“No,” Louis says, a bit too loudly. He stumbles down the path towards Nick, and only catches up by the time Nick gets to the back wall of the garden and has to stop to fumble with the gate.

“You’re the one meant to be taking care of me,” he adds, doing that thing he does with his jaw, tilting it up at Nick defiantly. “If I hurt myself it’ll be because you’re a shit nurse.”

Nick sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Christ, can’t you just go inside and sit still for ten seconds? No wonder everyone’s so bloody fed up with you.”

As soon as he says it, Louis visibly flinches, his face falling just for an instant before he schools it into something more neutral.

“Oh,” he says, quiet and tight. He seems to shrink into his hoodie, and Nick instantly feels like shit.

“Sorry, I didn’t--” Nick starts.

“Y’know, if it’s such a pain in the arse for me to be here I can just go back to London,” Louis interrupts, every inch of him suddenly defensive.

Nick sighs. That’s not what he _meant_ , and even though he’s still cross, the thought -- Louis going back to his enormous empty flat in London, all alone -- makes him feel immeasurably worse. Louis’ flat is too big and too modern, and the only things in it are shit no one needs, like ten flat screen televisions and enormous life-sized Spidermans. There’s nothing cozy or homey at all there, and even though Louis is driving him around the bend, the thought of sending him off there to recuperate all on his own feels impossibly wrong.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Nick says with a sigh, the bite gone out of his voice. “That’s not what I said.”

“I’m not an _idiot_ ," Louis protests, turning to stomp off and nearly toppling over in the process _again_ , exactly like an idiot might.

“Fucking _stop_ ,” Nick says, frustration leaching back into his voice as he catches Louis by the elbow. “Christ, I’m not telling you to leave, you tit. I’d rather you stay here than go off somewhere, but -- but you are being an idiot, alright, running around like you’re fucking _trying_ to get sent back to hospital.”

Louis squinches his face up mutinously, but Nick interrupts him before he can gain enough outraged momentum to start shouting.

“Do you have any idea,” he says, gesturing a bit frantically, “any idea at all how sick Liam’s making himself? He thinks it’s his fault you fucked yourself up so badly, did you know? And Harry’s like, fucking traumatized from watching you brain yourself, probably, and he called me about ten times a day when you were in hospital to cry, and you just -- you act like it doesn’t matter what you do, even though fucking _loads_ of people care about you quite a bit, and when you’re stupid and careless it affects them too, alright? Even if--” He can hear his own voice starting to go a bit hysterical and panicky, but oh God, he can’t stop it, now.

“Even if they’re not very good at like, the -- the caring about you part,” he continues, dropping Louis’ elbow and yanking his hands fiercely up into the sleeves of his jacket. “How are they supposed to get any better at it if you won’t even let them try, and just -- just go around _skateboarding off ledges_ all the bloody time without thinking?”

Louis gapes at him for a moment once he goes silent, like he’s waiting to see if Nick’s finished. He reckons he is, the echo of what he’s just said reeling a bit in his ears. He feels vaguely out of breath, and a bit horrified.

“Oh,” Louis says eventually. All the fight’s gone out of him, it seems. He looks puzzled, and slumps a bit against his crutches.

Nick sighs heavily, and then sits down on the step, fishing out a cigarette and lighting it. He reckons this probably counts as an emergency.

Louis sits awkwardly beside him after a moment, the two of them gazing out over the garden together. It’s overcast. Nick reckons it’ll rain soon.

“I didn’t…” Louis starts, but then shakes his head, like he’s reconsidering. “Sorry,” he says instead, his voice quiet. “I’m not an arsehole on purpose, okay? It just kind of happens sometimes.” He wiggles the toes that are peering out from the end of his cast thoughtfully. “And, like. You can help me up the stairs, if you want. When we get back inside.”

“Okay,” Nick says, exhaling smoke straight up into the gray sky. He waits to see if Louis will leave, but he doesn’t, waiting until Nick stubs the cigarette out and then rises, offering Louis his hand to help him up.

He hesitates, but takes it.

-

After they eat sandwiches with the scraps Nick manages to scrounge together from the refrigerator, Louis lets Nick help him up the stairs, one hand at his back as they go slowly and carefully.

Nick fetches his pain pills once Louis’ situated in bed again, leaving them on the side table with a glass of water. Louis wrinkles his nose at them, but chucks all three down in one go.

When Nick turns to go a moment later, Louis’ small hand grabs him tentatively at the wrist. When he turns back, Louis looks like he might say something -- like he might as Nick to stay, maybe, to crowd up beside him in the too-small bed and just stay there for a bit.

He doesn’t, though, but when he eventually lets go of Nick’s wrist, he does say “thank you,” softly.

“‘Course,” Nick answers, and means it.

-

Nick’s pretending to be finishing his dad’s crossword the next evening when Louis appears in front of him, holding firmly onto his crutches with a look of determination about him.

“I need your help,” he announces.

It surprises Nick enough that he sets down the crossword. “Alright,” he say, both cautious and curious. “With what?”

“I need a bath,” Louis says. “I can’t have a shower because my casts can’t get wet, and I can’t do it myself, so I need your help.” He says it firmly and precisely, which makes Nick suspect he’s practiced it, and like he’s trying very hard to make it sound like a very normal request, nothing out of the ordinary at all.

It’s a bit overdone, because Nick sees through it immediately, and also, because it _is_ weird -- bathing someone you used to date a bit.

But Louis is asking. He’s specifically asking for help, and help from Nick, and that’s -- that’s something. So even though he’s absolutely sure that this won’t amount to anything good, he hears himself saying, “Yeah, okay. I can do that.”

-

In the end, he finds a load of bin bags beneath the sink, and carries them upstairs to the toilet along with a box of rubber bands from the spare drawer. While the tub fills, he and Louis set about wrapping up his casts as best they can. It’s harder than Nick anticipates, given that they’re two adult men, at least technically. They get the one on Louis’ leg mostly secured, but it gets bungled by the time his wrist is sorted, so they have to start over. By the time it’s done well enough that Louis probably won’t ruin his plaster, the bathtub’s already full, and he looks like a very strange mummy, covered in plastic and rubber bands, holding both limbs out stiffly in front of him.

“Can you, like--” Nick makes a gesture that he hopes is a close mime approximation of _get naked_ , trying to stave off the instinct to flush.

Being naked’s sort of like, a key part of having a bath, but he’d managed to mostly put that out of his mind while the task of wrapping Louis in bin bags had been directly at hand. Now that that’s sorted, though, there’s not really anything else left to distract him, and the thought of being trapped in a small room with Louis’ naked body is making Nick squirm.

Maybe the help with the bin bags will be enough, and Louis can like, hop into the tub himself, and Nick can go down the hall and think of anything else in the world besides Louis being naked.

“Yeah, just -- hang on,” Louis says, using his good arm to pull of his hoodie and vest in one go, tongue caught between his teeth in concentration. The bin bag gets moved around a bit by the time Louis is free of his shirts, and Nick has to lean in and fix it, trying very hard not to look at Louis’ chest this close up.

He fails, of course. Louis looks thinner, and he’s got more stupid tattoos, and a collection of nearly faded bruises mottling his right side. Nick straightens the bin bag and takes a step backward.

“Probably need help getting in, though,” Louis says. “Wouldn’t want to fall and hurt myself, yeah?”

Nick barks out a laugh, unable to stop himself.

Louis leans against the sink as he balances on one leg, propping his crutches out of the way, and then moves his hands to the waistband of his trackies.

“Right,” Nick says. “I’ll just, like…” He’s not sure what. He’s meant to stay, obviously, but he still feels like he ought to do something. Avert his gaze? Turn around and face the linen cupboard?

“Don’t be stupid,” Louis says, not quite meeting Nick’s eyes. “Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

Which is true, but at the moment, very much not the point.

Then Louis manages to leverage his torn-apart trackies off, and Christ, he’s not even wearing pants.

Nick swallows heavily. He’ll just — he’ll pretend he’s a nurse. He’s a professional nurse who gives the old and infirm baths for a living, and as a result is unperturbed by the human body in its unclothed state, even -- _especially_ \-- if that state happens to be tan and fit and one Nick knows firsthand is ticklish beneath the ribs and at the back of the knees.

Louis leans into him, and somehow, they manage to get him into the tub without slipping or Nick fainting, Louis’ arm and leg dangled carefully over the edge once he’s settled.

Nick retreats to sit on the edge of the toilet. He’s not sure he’s mentally equipped to actually _give Louis a sponge bath_ , which is a premise for pornography that he’d always found a bit absurd and unsexy but is now rapidly amending his opinion on.

Louis, thank God, for once doesn’t seize the opportunity to make an awkward situation even worse. He makes small talk, mostly, about tour and Harry and football teams Nick knows nothing about while he tries to wash off clumsily.

When he goes to wash his hair, though, he stops, clearly at a loss with only one working hand.

“Is it weird if I ask you to do this bit?” he asks Nick.

Nick blinks, feeling a bit lightheaded. “Probably,” he says, but moves to sit on the edge of the bathtub anyway.

“Have you spoke to your mum recently?” he asks as he tentatively starts to lather Louis’ hair. He’s done this before, actually, but the circumstances were vastly different, so he doesn’t think it counts as like… experience. It’s not making it any easier, at least.

“Last night,” Louis says. He’s relaxed a bit under Nick’s touch, although he’s still straining to keep his casts out of the water.

“Does she know you’re here? Specifically, I mean?” Nick asks, suddenly curious.

He’d met Louis’ mum once, at Louis’ flat, and mostly by chance -- she’d been arriving as he’d been leaving. Louis had just introduced him as _Nick_ , but she’d smiled like that meant something, and they’d had a cup of tea together before Nick went off. His overall impression had been that she was a lovely, warm woman who scared him more than a bit.

“Yeah,” Louis says. His voice is a little soft and breathless, and Nick doesn’t think about that. “Demanded to know where I was going off to.”

“And you told her here?” Nick double checks. For some reason, it feels weirdly nice -- he guesses he’d supposed Louis would lie about it.

“Mhm,” Louis agrees. If there’s anything else he wants to add to that, he doesn’t give it up.

Nick digs his fingers into Louis’ scalp a bit harder, and the noise that Louis makes at that is very nearly a moan. It immediately goes to Nick’s prick, and he stiffens his spine, frantically trying to bargain with his body to not go all pervy over _washing an injured person’s hair_.

“And how is she?” he asks, voice going high and a bit frantic. “And the babies? I never heard how their birth went, if it is was like, y’know… smooth sailing or whatever.”

Louis tips his head back and lets Nick rinse the shampoo out.

“Nick,” Louis says, a bit raspy. “Can you maybe not talk about my mum right now?”

Nick can’t help himself, then. He glances down, and Louis is definitely getting hard, his cock poking up just above the water. Nick looks away frantically, anywhere else -- the ceiling, the basin, anywhere.

“Sorry,” he says, unsure what he’s apologizing for. He’d figured mum-talk would maybe steer this to a decidedly less sexual place, but maybe Louis is right -- maybe there’s nothing to be done about this, and talking about Louis mum will only make it more weird rather than less.

“Turns out I can’t wank off with my left hand,” Louis says after a moment, like that explains it all.

“Right,” Nick agrees.

“That’s all,” he insists. But then Nick drops his hands to rinse them off in the water, and Louis grabs his wrist. Fuck, _fuck_ Nick wants to touch him.

“D’you--” he starts, even though he has no bloody idea how to end that sentence. _Want help with that too?_ Christ, that really does make him sound like he’s in a bad porn.

“Please,” Louis says quietly, bringing Nick’s hand down to his dick.

He’s hard and hot and exactly like Nick remembers. Fuck, he’s always loved Louis’ cock. Too much, probably. Nick’s had sex with plenty of people, but no one he’s ever shagged has fallen apart as sweetly and totally as Louis does when he’s getting fucked, or having his dick sucked. No one begs as beautifully as Louis does, once he lets himself.

This is a bad idea, he thinks wildly, pressing the heel of his spare hand to his own dick, traitorously hard just from the first touch of Louis’ cock. He’s only willing to admit it to himself right now because his heart is beating too quickly and the room is too hot, but it’d taken him ages to get over Louis, and not just the sex bit. They’d both called it off, and Nick had still been fucked up for ages over it. This isn’t going to help anything.

It doesn’t stop him moving his hand over Louis’ cock, though. He’s not sure what would, honestly, with Louis flushed and panting, tipping his head against Nick’s shoulder as he starts to come apart.

When Louis comes, he gasp and buries his face against the sleeve of Nick’s shirt. Something in Nick’s chest clenches painfully, and he knows he’s fucked.

-

They leave the crutches behind once Louis gets out of the bath, and he leans against Nick’s side as he walks him down the hall to his bedroom. He’s still naked, and Nick’s shirt is wet from Louis leaning against it and trying to help him dry off.

He helps Louis lower gingerly into his bed, still feeling dazed and turned on and totally at a loss of what to do next.

“Stay,” Louis says slowly, like he’s read his mind. “Please, c’mere.”

He reaches for Nick and yanks, and he only just stops himself from landing on Louis’ cast. If Louis notices, he ignores it, reaching up a bit tentatively until he’s got Nick’s cheek in his hand, and he’s leaning up to kiss him, warm and sweet.

“You should fuck me,” he says when he pulls back, nearly a whisper.

Nick’s stomach hurts from how bad he wants to, and how he knows he can’t, he absolutely can’t. He can’t do that to either of them.

“You don’t want me to fuck you, love,” he says quietly, pressing a kiss at the edge of Louis’ jaw. It would be good -- it was always so good, fuck, but Louis doesn’t really want Nick, even if he thinks he might right now.

“I do, though,” Louis says, eyes pleading. “Don’t you? Want to?”

Nick shuts his eyes for a moment, and then forces himself off the bed. “Wanting to was never the problem.”

Louis just blinks up at him, not bothering to hide the fact that he’s half hard again.

“It wouldn’t be a good idea,” Nick adds, not sure who, exactly, he’s trying to convince. “What with… everything.”

He means Louis’ injuries -- his leg, and his arm, and how he can’t really move without wincing, because that’s a good enough excuse to get Nick off the hook without having to say much more -- but he suspects that’s not how it comes out.

“I think it would be,” Louis says, but he doesn’t move to grab Nick again, or ask him to stay. He pulls the sheets up around his hips, and blinks heavily, like he hasn’t got it in him to argue it.

“Get some rest, yeah?” Nick says quietly before he closes the door behind him on the way out.

-

In the kitchen, he opens a bottle of his mum’s wine and stands over the sink, drinking it and watching the garden go dark through the window.

He feels monstrously out of place, suddenly. He’s too big for the kitchen, and he doesn’t know anyone in the photographs his mum has held up on the refrigerator with magnets, and there’s an absurdly beautiful billionaire upstairs in his childhood bed who’d asked Nick to fuck him, and Nick had said no.

He barely recognizes any of it.

He takes the bottle of wine into the lounge with him, and when he finally drifts off to a hazy, tipsy sleep, he has snatches of dreams where terrible things happen to Louis: he’s in a car wreck and back in the hospital, he’s got cancer and all his hair falls out, he’s somewhere that no one can get to him and Nick knows he’s crying.

He wakes up in the middle of the night and retches up a stomach full of red wine into the wastebasket beside the sofa. He rinses it out before Louis wakes.

-

Somehow, the next morning isn’t horrifically awkward. Louis comes down on his own in the morning like usual, and Nick frowns at him for using the stairs on his own before he can help it. Louis demands tea, and Nick makes them cereal, and they sit on the sofa. Nick only has a brief flash of the nightmares from the night before once, when Louis leans off the side of the sofa to retrieve his phone from where it’s fallen and nearly tips over himself, and when he does, Nick lets Louis change the television to an old Arsenal game for the rest of the morning.

-

He goes off to the shops on his own in the afternoon, because there’s truly no food left in the house anymore. Louis is back upstairs, sleeping. His pain pills had made him particularly woozy around noon, so he’d asked Nick to help him to bed. For a moment, Nick had wondered if it was going to wind up another advance that he probably wouldn’t be strong enough to turn down twice in a row, but Louis had just curled up on top of the duvet and fallen asleep nearly before Nick was out of the room.

When he gets back with a load of frozen pizzas and a few pre-made salads, he thinks about calling up the stairs to Louis, but thinks better of it, since he might still be sleeping.

He walks gingerly upstairs instead, meaning only to peek in and make sure that Louis is sleeping soundly and then piss off -- he definitely _isn’t_ going to stand there and watch Louis sleep like some sort of lunatic.

Except when he nudges the door open, Louis isn’t asleep at all. He’s managed to get himself out of bed and onto the ground, and he’s paging through a notebook that he’s clearly found in the bottom drawer of Nick’s old desk.

For an instant, Nick feels unspeakably embarrassed. He doesn’t know what’s in that notebook, but it’s likely been around since year 8, so it can’t be anything good.

He tries to tamp that down, though, because honestly, why should he be embarrassed? _He’s_ not the one who’s been caught red-handed going through someone else’s things.

So he tries to summon up an appropriate amount of outrage as he goes in, but there’s something about the sight of Louis curled up with his legs half crossed on the rug of his bedroom floor that stops him getting there all the way.

He clears his throat instead, expecting Louis to startle and fumble for an explanation, but he just looks up with a shameless grin on his face.

“Hi,” he says. “Look what I found.”

“Do I even want to know?” Nick asks warily, stepping into the room.

Louis tilts the notebook towards him a bit. A particularly unflattering picture of Nick taken when he was about fifteen flutters out of the pages, and he groans. He suddenly has the strong suspicion that it also contains a massive cache of notes he used to pass in class with his friend Josie from that year, including the one he’d made up to look like a press announcement naming him as the new host of the Breakfast Show. Jesus, if Louis’ seen that, he’ll never hear the end of it.

“Christ,” Nick says, flopping down on the bed. “Alright, in my defense, I didn’t grow into my looks until Uni, okay? So please keep that in mind when you take the piss out of me.” He grabs a pillow and holds it over his face. Maybe he can suffocate himself just a bit, and wake up once Louis’ finished laughing at his spotty, spiky-haired past.

“You look like a hedgehog,” Louis says delightedly. “Why is your hair so pointy?”

Nick just groans from beneath the pillow.

“Is your shirt _camouflaged?_ ” Louis asks, his grin nearly audible. He reaches an arm up and yanks at the sleeve of Nick’s jumper. “Come down here, I have lots of questions.”

Nick checks he won’t land on Louis’ bad leg, and then rolls onto the ground, because might as well.

“I just genuinely want to know why you ever did that to your hair,” Louis says, passing the photo over to Nick. He grimaces; it’s worse than he remembers.

“Yeah, alright, someone of us were idiots when we were sixteen,” he says. “Can’t all have been beautiful popstars before we even hit our twenties.”

“True enough, I suppose,” Louis says, still grinning, and preening a bit under the sort-of compliment.

“S’weird,” Nick says, passing the photo back to Louis, mostly so he doesn’t have to look at it any more. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m nothing like that person anymore or exactly the same.”

He braces himself for Louis to say something glib and smart-arsed, but instead he just shrugs and nestles the photograph back in the pages of the notebook. “Both, probably,” he says. “Like, you can change and still be the same person, y’know? It’s not all one or the other.”

Nick makes a quiet _hm_. He hadn’t exactly meant to say that last bit out loud, really, so he’s not sure what to do with Louis’ disarmingly insightful response.

“Well,” he says, not quite sure how to feel. “Like to think I dress a bit less like a knob now, at least.”

He expects Louis to laugh and agree with him, but instead he just tilts his head up at Nick and smiles a bit curiously, like he’s just noticed something.

“Think I would’ve liked sixteen year old Nick,” he says thoughtfully.

Nick tries not to flush. “What, when you were nine?” he asks.

Louis snorts. “Probably, yeah. When I was sixteen too, though. Think I’d like you pretty much whenever, to be honest.”

Nick might be nearly thirty rather than sixteen, now, but his stomach flips like it hasn’t gotten the message. God, it’s absurd that Louis can make him feel this much like an idiot teenager, and somehow in the best way. It doesn’t make sense; Nick was the worst teenager on the face of the planet.

They sit together for a moment, and eventually Louis rearranges himself, motioning for Nick to help him up.

“Your hair’s still too tall, though,” he says when Nick hands him his crutches, still smiling that curious little grin

Nick can’t help the laugh that comes out of him, and it settles pleasantly in his stomach for the rest of the day.

-

Nick ends up canceling his holiday with Alexa.

He doesn’t really _mean_ to, only the next day is bad for Louis. His head hurts, he says, a leftover from hitting it -- the doctors had warned him it might flare up like this, but it still sets Nick in a tiny panic when it happens.

They’re on the sofa again, still watching television from the same spots they’ve been taking all week -- Louis on the left and Nick on the right -- but Louis’ face is drawn tighter than usual, and he grimaces whenever he moves.

“Alright?” Nick asks as Louis repositions himself again restlessly, huffing out the third unhappy sigh in as many minutes.

“Hurts,” he says simply. “Can’t get comfortable. Head hurts.” He huffs again.

Louis looks very small, at the moment, and he’s not trying to disguise the pain on his face, and his hair is soft across his forehead, and it’s all Nick can do not to croon sympathetically at him like some sort of lovesick bird.

“C’mere,” he says instead, reaching out an arm to make a space alongside himself. Louis looks at him a bit cautiously, but only for a moment, and then he scoots in carefully, leaning back against Nick’s chest so they’re cuddled against each other, tucked up on the sofa snug and close.

It takes a moment to get themselves arranged right. It’s been a long time -- a long time since Nick’s been this near to _anyone_ , let alone Louis, so they have to figure out how their bodies fit together again. But they do, is the thing -- Louis’s head rests right beneath Nick’s chin likes it’s made to do nothing else, his hair tickling and smelling of apples. His bad leg and arm have to be cautiously arranged, but even then, it’s not long before they’re breathing against each other, slotted like two puzzle pieces. Nick can feel Louis relaxing by increments, and suspects he’ll be asleep again soon.

It feels right, really terribly _right_ , to hold Louis while he sleeps again.

So he doesn’t think he can be blamed when he waits until Louis’ breathing steadies into even, shallow puffs, and then fishes out his phone from between the sofa cushions, dialing carefully so as not to dislodge Louis, and waits for Alexa to answer before offering his apologies.

She shouts at him for a bit, but she doesn’t actually sound very put out with him about it. Anyway, she’s seeing some model who she’ll probably strong-arm into coming along with her in Nick’s stead, so he doesn’t feel too bad, and promises to let her shout at him some more over brunch when she gets back, so it’s alright.

It’s only because Louis’ head hurts, and someone needs to look after him. It still aches when he wakes an hour later, Louis reports, and his wrist as well, twinging sharply where the pins have gone in to reset it. There’s an itch down the cast on his leg as well, and they spend twenty minutes using a drinking straw to reach down inside and scratch it.

That’s why Nick cancels his trip. Because someone’s got to watch Louis, and Nick’s the only one for it. That’s all. Nothing to do with the way Louis fits so well in Nick’s arms, or the way Nick realizes with a jolt while Louis is still sleeping just how badly he wants to kiss him.

-

Louis won’t take his pain pills that night, even though he’s still clearly uncomfortable.

“They make me fuzzy,” he whines, burrowing further against Nick’s side. “Tired of feeling like I’m broken.”

Nick thinks that doesn’t make much sense at all -- if Louis doesn’t want to feel broken then he should take the pills to keep away the ache from where he _is_ , quite literally. But he knows it won’t do much to say so, so he shrugs and says “your decision, love.”

Louis glances up at him at that, and Nick flushes, because he hadn’t really meant to let that slip out, but Louis doesn’t say anything, just resettles in Nick’s arms with an ease that almost feels unnatural. Louis is always fighting Nick, it sometimes seems like, but at the moment he isn’t at all.

He doesn’t fight him when Nick leads him up the stairs to bed, either, full of the frozen pizzas Nick’d bought and heated up for dinner. Louis winces as they go, and leans heavily on Nick’s shoulder, letting him guide them both.

When Louis is settled in Nick’s bed, the room feels still and soft and quiet. It’s strange, because usually that makes Nick antsy, feel claustrophobic and trapped, but right now it’s just cozy. He doesn’t want to run -- he doesn’t want to go anywhere that Louis isn’t, tucked in Nick’s old bed, soft and sweet in a rumpled vest and trackies, his expression wide-open. Nick had forgotten about that look -- the one where Louis isn’t on guard, for once, isn’t calculating or evaluating or sizing anyone up, just open instead. It’s so startlingly familiar and foreign all at once that Nick’s chest seizes up, and he thinks he knows what it means, and hopes wildly that he’s not wrong.

“Stay,” Louis says quietly, looking up at him. He doesn’t grab Nick’s wrist, but holds out a hand like he’s asking, like Nick can take it if he likes, or just turn and go back downstairs if he doesn’t.

Nick inhales, and takes Louis’ hand.

He settles himself beside Louis, propped up on his elbow, and suddenly his heart is beating too fast even though it’s not any closer than they’d been all afternoon curled up on the sofa.

And then Louis’ hand -- his good one -- comes to rest softly on Nick’s hip, and Nick leans in, because he has to kiss him. He has to.

“Missed you,” Nick says, surprised by how forcefully he feels it. He hadn’t really let himself admit it up until now, even when he’d been moping and drinking too much and maybe crying just a bit after they’d called it off. He’d _missed_ Louis, _fuck_.

“God,” Louis says, squirming closer, lining up their bodies. “Missed you like mad. Been such a miserable twat over you, I _hated_ it. Fuck, hate not being with you.”

“I didn’t know,” Nick says, surprised. As far as he’d been aware, Louis’d been fine with their ending it, carrying on like normal in the way Nick hadn’t been able to manage. “Harry never said.”

“Told him I’d kill him in his sleep if he mentioned it to you,” Louis says before kissing him again. “Didn’t want you to know. Didn’t want -- like.” He whines, kissing Nick again like he’s trying to sort out what he means. “M’not good at…” He shakes his head again, frowning.

“Me either,” Nick admits, because he knows what Louis means. Neither of them had been very good at being boyfriends. They hadn’t even called each other that, even after months, which maybe should’ve been a hint. Louis hadn’t known how to let himself be taken care of, and Nick hadn’t known how to do it, and when it’d gotten hard they’d washed their hands of it.

Right now, that seems like the stupidest fucking decision in the world to Nick. They might not have been any good at it, but fuck, he loves Louis. He does, even if he’d never said it out loud. He loves him, and that should’ve been good enough reason to try.

“We could be, though,” Louis says slowly. His arms are still twined around Nick like he doesn’t want to let him go, and he sounds tentative, like he thinks Nick will shake his head and throw him off, but determined to get it out anyway. Nick hates himself, just for an instant, that he’s given Louis good reason to think he might do that to him.

“We could be good together this time,” Louis adds quietly. “If you wanted to. But I missed you, and when you called when I was in hospital I was almost happy I’d hurt myself so bad if it meant I could talk to you again. And then I thought, well maybe this’ll be the last time we talk, after you hung up, and that just… I didn’t want it.” He shuts his eyes for a long moment. “That’s why I came here. Didn’t want it to be the last time.”

Nick wonders if his heart can break and knit together all at once.

“We can,” he says, clutching almost frantically at Louis’ chin while he kisses him. “Fuck, we can. We can be together, God, I missed you _so_ much. I’ll be better, _we’ll_ be better, just -- just don’t go away again.” He thinks he’s begging, maybe, and suddenly doesn’t care, so long as he gets to keep Louis right here, just like this.

Louis kisses him again, and it sets something on fire in Nick’s chest. Louis tastes like mint and tea and fits perfectly into Nick’s arms, and Nick wants every piece of him, every part.

His hands are on Louis’ stomach, and then in his hair, and his tongue is in his mouth and Louis’ hips are trying to buck against Nick’s, and Jesus, he’d been so sure he’d ruined this, that he wouldn’t get this again. It feels almost divine realizing he’d be wrong.

“Fuck, can you -- I want you,” Louis gasps into Nick’s mouth. He can feel Louis’ cock thickening up in trackies, and the sudden sense memory of what it’s like to fuck Louis overwhelms him, forces him to shut his eyes for a moment.

“What d’you want?” he asks, because he wants to give Louis whatever he can in the world.

“Want you to fuck me,” Louis says, voice hoarse.

“Right -- can we,” Nick says, pulling away to look at Louis’ body. He’s not sure how this will work. “Will it hurt you?” he asks.

“Maybe if I’m, like, on my back?” Louis asks, screwing up his face like he’s trying to puzzle it out. He leans back, but when he tries to move his leg experimentally he winces.

“No, don’t want you to hurt yourself,” Nick murmurs, leaning down to kiss Louis. He wants to fuck him, yeah, but he’s also meant to take care of him -- that’s what you do with someone you love.

“There’s got to be a way,” Louis says, although Nick can’t think of one. Louis certainly can’t get on his knees, or spread his legs wide enough for Nick to curl up behind him that way.

“If you fuck me?” Nick asks, although he’s not sure that’ll be any better.

“You could ride me,” Louis says, but when Nick tries to kneel experimentally over his hips, he jarrs Louis’ leg and he whimpers, and Nick jolts off him like he’d been burned.

“I won’t do it if it’s hurting you, love,” he says, curling up against Louis again. Louis makes an unhappy noise, and Nick kisses him to stop it. “Another time, yeah? Just -- just let me take care of you for now, alright? Let me take care of you.”

He pulls off, then, and sits back to kneels beside Louis. He helps Louis raise his arms up and squirm out of his vest, and tosses his own shirt after it onto the floor. He kneels down the bed and carefully peels Louis’ trackies down, keeping careful not to move his leg. They go easily enough, from Louis’ handiwork of hacking off the leg, and then Nick has to sit back, because Louis isn’t wearing pants, and he’s naked in front of him, laid out in his bed.

Fuck, he’s beautiful. Even banged up and a bit too thin and covered in plaster and leftover bruises, Louis is the most beautiful person Nick’s ever seen. It’s overwhelming.

Nick moves to arrange the pillows carefully around Louis’ legs, building a little retaining wall so he won’t accidentally get jostled or prodded, propping one under his knee so it’s elevated a bit. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do -- help a bit, maybe.

“Look at you,” he says, leaning back in to kiss down Louis’ neck, fit his hands against his bare hip.

“You -- you too,” Louis gasps, voice going breathy when Nick touches his teeth gently to his pulse point. “Get your clothes off, fuck, I want to see.”

Nick hadn’t really been thinking about himself, which is a strange realization -- too focused on Louis, on making him feel good. But if that’s what Louis wants, then Nick wants it too, and when he climbs off the bed to peel off his own skinny jeans and pants, he has to squeeze at his cock, because it’s impossible not to be achingly hard with Louis spread out naked and flushed beneath him, one hand fisted in the sheets beside him.

“Gonna make you feel good,” Nick promises, dropping to kneel on the bed around Louis’ hips as best he can. Fuck, that’s all he wants to do -- to take care of this boy who never, never seems to let him, but suddenly is.

“Please,” Louis says softly, and then gasps when Nick’s mouth fits around his dick so sweetly that Nick thinks he never wants to hear another sound as long as he lives.

Nick’s eyes shut as he tightens his mouth around Louis. It’s ridiculous, but he’s missed Louis’ cock, pink and perfect and so, _so_ hard for him. He drags his tongue up the length of it, and then flicks it along the tip, making Louis hiss. Nick whimpers when he does.

When Louis comes for him, it’s with another gasp and a violent jerk of his hips, twisting around the finger Nick’s worked carefully inside him, crooking up to send Louis into shuddering convulsions. He whimpers, and then he’s shooting hot in Nick’s mouth, clenching around his fingers, and when he pulls back, a thin line of saliva strung between his mouth and Louis’ prick, Nick has to rest his forehead against Louis’ hip. When he looks up, he realizes Louis’ eyes are closed as well, and he’s gripping Nick’s spare hand now instead of the bedsheets.

When he finally manages to sit up, Nick is so hard he doesn’t think he can manage anything else besides kneeling astride Louis’ chest and wanking himself furiously. Louis just watches, eyes intent, flicking back between Nick’s cock and face as he breathes heavily, flushed and beautiful.

He must be able to tell how terribly quickly Nick’s about to come, because the only thing he does is tell him “Do it,” quietly, and lift his left hand up to meet Nick’s on his cock as he jerks himself a few quick times and then _does_ , coming with a groan across the soft lines of Louis’ chest and stomach, too turned on and twisted inside out to manage to feel embarrassed about it.

He slumps over once he’s done, and it’s a long time before he can get up and fetch a flannel from the toilet, curling up alongside Louis again once he does, wiping him off gently.

“You alright?” Nick asks once he tosses the flannel away and gathers Louis into his arms. Louis snorts against the curve of Nick’s shoulder where his face is smushed up against it.

“Fine, thanks,” he says, even though it comes out a bit breathless.

“Are you sure? Fuck, you’re _injured_ , I’ve probably hurt you--”

Louis cuts him off, though kissing him quiet. “Don’t be stupid,” he says against Nick’s mouth. “I’m great.”

Nick frowns. “Good. You’d better be. D’you want a pain pill, at least?”

Louis sighs, pretending to be put upon, but agrees to let Nick fetch him one from the bedside table anyway, and swallows it down without complaining.

“Don’t go back to the couch,” he says once he’s done. “Stay here tonight.” He doesn’t blink or look away, but there’s still something in his expression like he expects Nick to shake his head and go anyway.

He won’t. He’s not going anywhere if he can help it.

“I won’t,” he promises. “I’ll stay.”

He stays, and Louis drops off to sleep almost straight away, curled into the side of Nick’s chest. He runs too hot, and he twitches, and steals most of the sheets, and Nick sleeps better than he has in months.

-

When Nick wakes in the morning, Louis is staring at him.

“Hi,” he croaks out, one eye open. It’s early.

“Hi,” Louis repeats.

“Hi,” Nick says again, because he’s not sure what else to say. Louis is in his bed, which technically has been true this whole week, but this time Nick’s there _with_ him.

He’s not sure what to do with it -- it feels fragile, and he doesn’t want to shatter it, say the wrong thing and have the moment pop out like a soap bubble.

“D’you feel alright?” he asks after a moment. He’s still not sure 

Louis rolls his eyes, but smiles. “You sucked my dick, you didn’t hit me with your car.”

Nick scowls. “Still. I could’ve, like, jostled you or something.” He peers at Louis, at his cast and the scratches on his face and his stubble and his eyes, soft and sleepy, trying to find any hint that he’s in pain, and that it’s Nick’s fault. He can’t see any, but he still wants to be sure.

“Anyway, orgasms are good for you,” Louis says, settling back on the pillow. “Got, like, healing properties. Endorphins, or something.” He waves his hand vaguely and snuggles against Nick’s shoulder.

“Oh, well,” Nick says, risking a moment to nod his head down and nuzzle his nose against Louis’ hair -- just for a second. “I can leave you to it while you just wank yourself back to health, then.”

“Nah,” Louis says. “Can’t wank. Remember?” He holds his broken wrist up an inch from Nick’s nose, like he might’ve forgotten the circumstances that had led Louis to be here like this.

“Hm,” Nick says. Fuck, he’s _happy_ , and that almost feels dangerous, being so happy to have Louis back like this, naked and lovely and talking crap. He really, really hopes he doesn’t bollocks it up again. He wants to say, _please don’t let me. Please don’t let me send you off again by being a twat and letting you be a twat too_. “Guess you’ll have to keep me around for a bit, then,” he says instead.

Louis tilts his head up at him and smiles, crooked and just for Nick. “Guess so,” he says, trying to sigh and not quite managing to wipe the smile from his face.

-

Nick goes to get them breakfast, eventually, once he’s kissed Louis a bit, like if he does it enough he’ll _have_ to stay. But when they manage to get out of bed, there’s still no food -- he’s not sure how he’d managed to forget cereal at the market, but he’s done it anyway --  and neither of them would be able to cook it if there was, anyway, so Nick pulls on his jeans and wanders to the bakery down the street, leaving Louis propped up in a mountain of cushions on the sofa.

It’s harder than Nick wants to admit to walk away from him.

He comes back loaded down with croissants and pain au chocolate and a half dozen other treats he vaguely remembers seeing Louis eat before -- things he knows Louis will be pleased with.

But when he comes through the door, Louis’ not where he left him. There’s the familiar thump of crutches on the dining room carpet, though, so Nick toes off his shoes and follows it, bag of pastries in hand.

Louis has straightened the clutter they’d both let accumulate across the unused half the dining table over the last week -- magazines and power cords and knit hats and other stray detritus they’d left behind them. There are plates at their places, two of them, the matching ones with little flowers dancing around the edge that his mum uses on Sundays. There’s tea, two mugs of it, although no coffee for Nick. He doesn’t feel put out about it, though. His chest feels entirely too small, actually.

“All I could manage,” Louis grumbles, tossing his crutches aside away and thumping down in the chair he’s claimed as his own. When Nick sets the bag on the table, he makes grabby little hands on it, but refuses to actually lean forward and pick anything until Nick hands him a croissant. “Washing up’s on you.”

Louis sprays crumbs out of his mouth a bit, as he keeps talking, but Nick doesn’t mind. He doesn’t mind at all the way Louis is complaining that he hasn’t brought any of the biscuits he wanted, or how he steals Nick’s tea even though he’s got his own, or the way his plastered-up foot keeps banging against Nick’s under the table. Nick doesn’t mind at all, because this feels right, the two of them like this. Louis might be an idiot who’s broken himself in the stupidest way possible, and Nick might not be able to remember cereal at the shops, and _fuck_ , he’s pretty sure he hasn’t watered his mum’s ficus once since he’s been here, but suddenly that doesn’t seem to matter much. They might not have any sort of idea what they’re doing, but he thinks they’ll figure it out this time.

He feels sure of it, in fact.


End file.
